We expect the police to be close to the population that they serve to create order and peace. Photo Credit: class M planet via Compfightcc

If competition would improve public education, would it also improve police services?

Certainly with issues of public policing continuing to rise throughout the U.S. from Ferguson, Missouri to Baltimore, Maryland, the question about how to improve policing is rising along with concerns.

But we have not heard much of anything about creating private competition for publicly-funded police departments as a way of improving them.

The concluding two sentences in Ben Felder’s new book Our City, Our Kids is an unmistakable commitment to public schools in Oklahoma City:

Any Failure in the Oklahoma City Public School district is our failure as a community and city. These are our schools, and these are our kids.

A prolific journalist covering everything in the core of Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma Gazette reporter has used his extensive knowledge of Oklahoma City Public Schools to fashion a very efficient 50 page book that succeeds as a quick source of information and a call to action for residents of the central part of the Oklahoma City metro.

For most of us parents, the first impression that we have of school is that it is a warm, welcoming place. It’s because that first impression comes from viewing the Kindergarten class on an occasional basis when our children first start school. Continue reading The Hostile Workplace of Teachers→

OKLAHOMA CITY — It was a tough Monday morning for Oklahoma Rep. Scott Biggs (R-Dist. 51) as he tried to sell SB 301 to skeptical GOP and Democratic House members in the Education Committee*.

The bill is intended to establish a dedicated investigator of the state Board of Education to make sure that teachers suspected of being “sexual predators” can’t move from one school district to another when legal prosecutions fall apart.